are you literally getting psychological counseling to help you deal with the trauma from moderating?
To be fair, Finale Fireworker literally did.
Here's the thing, we can't know for sure what any of these people are saying is true and what is LARPing for praise. They say "abuse" and "harassment" for annoying and criticism. They talk about "trauma" when they have complete control over the situation.
They make claims as to "endless abuse" from Media Create thread posters but then post as an example a PM from a burner account that
has never posted that I can tell. And for that reason I am going to go a different direction from other posters earlier.
There simply is no reason to accept their narrative and believe any of this is happening. I had been a moderator and admin for probably close to fifteen years or so (all things together) including at a semi-prominent site that got listed in video game credits during the pre-2010 internet. (I say this not to brag but to point out the size of the website and its associated forums.) There were annoying messages and some of it briefly approached "harassment" that was doubly annoying. (One time banned a guy for making death threats over basketball threads, he proceeded to e-mail me for a couple weeks straight about all the ways he was going to find me and rape and murder me in real life, including that he had my address. I convinced him to confirm it with me so it would be a "fair fight", it was for a real estate broker in London who had my first name and last name as their first name and middle name. I called him gay for wanting to rape me and he e-mailed for another couple weeks before stopping.) Other staff members had other annoying situations but the closest to real harassment was someone e-mailing them regularly at their job to demand a mod get released quicker.
So I'm sure they get annoying crap, I
know they get annoying reports because they have it open to everyone, I
know they get annoying PMs because they have annoying users. But I am entirely incredulous as to them receiving harassment and abuse, especially on the regular. We have evidence,
hard evidence from this last week that they consider it "harassment" to say an admin should not be an admin to a non-member on Twitter. Whenever they have shown evidence of this abuse and harassment they supposedly get it has always been nothing. In all my years, me and the staff never had issues with sharing what we got publicly if only for others to laugh at the absurdity of it. (Except in the case of the guy getting stuff at his job.) When ResetERA.com staff share these messages, in deceitful ways, it frankly looks made up.
Reading this thread here is
not abuse or harassment. Even when people insult Nepenthe for being short or getting scammed by her stepfather or enjoying the story in Need for Speed. Reading the Kiwi Farms equivalent thread is
not abuse or harassment even though they use the n-word and f-word regularly and write extremely bigoted diatribes against the staff/members. Both of those things are entirely avoidable by simply not doing it. There is no need to "keep up" on these threads because there is no legitimate threat originating from them. Same with Twitter accounts. Same with reddit or Facebook or anywhere else they feel the need to stalk their forum members. There literally is no need for them to follow their members off board, especially when they have constructed their rules in such a way that they can ban anyone, for any reason, for any length, at any time. Let alone dox and harass them as Hecht has confirmed to have done.
If, and I tentatively agree it is likely, Nepenthe gets the most criticism and annoying messages it is probably simply due to her aggressive behavior. This is how she stands out from the other mods. Not being black, not being a woman, not being "non-binary" (a recent addition), not even being a furry probably. But unlike the other mods she is aggressive in her language, her posture and her procedures. She's also incredibly self-centered at all times. Remember when we were all rioting to #SaveKetkat? Nepenthe pushed aside all the issues TransEra had (legitimate or not) to write multiple lengthy LiveJournals about how bad
she felt and how much
she was suffering from the mods in general, and Royalan in specific, being criticized by a marginalized group. Based on the staff's own accounting of their "summits" she did similar things in those. In the recent case of the Media Create thread it was her who came bounding into the thread to criticize the prominent members, announce new thread-specific rules (without actually stating what they were), ban multiple members and then unilaterally close the thread until she felt like unlocking it. Then she claimed none of this was true and the incompetence was actually caused by everyone else on staff and she was just the messenger. And this is an actually regular thing that happens unlike the supposed abuse and harassment.
Many of the people we spoke to described ResetEra as an opportunity to redefine what moderation culture looks like from the ground up. Without worrying about Malka’s presence and reputation, they would be able to set their own rules and guidelines, operating under the internal rules they agreed upon in the earliest of planning stages. Big industry names, including Emily Rogers, Nibellion and Shinobi602 all joined ResetEra with hopes of building a bigger and better forum for the community to thrive in — one that wouldn’t be associated with NeoGAF.
Shinobi602, a known member who stepped back from NeoGAF in March, told Polygon that, for the most part, ResetEra’s moderation and administrative sides will be full of new faces, alongside those notable to longtime followers.
“We see this as a fresh start and an opportunity to build our own moderation culture and aren't really looking for comparisons,” Shinobi602 said. “We hope to be genuinely fair minded, reasonable and transparent. We really want to shape a positive community for everyone.
